Category: Latin America

American President Donald Trump’s policy to protect jobs by imposing restrictions on H-1B visas is unlikely to be of any help to that country and may hurt US interests, say experts. What Trump is seeking to protect are entry level jobs that are being phased out by the tech majors, with automation, artificial intelligence and robotics paving the way to increased productivity.

India’s large outsourcing firms may be hesitant to give a verdict on policies of President-Elect Donald Trump when he gets into office, thanks to his anti-immigration and anti-outsourcing rhetoric that helped him win elections. But Gopi Natarajan, chief executive of Omega Healthcare is betting on Trump’s policies would increase outsourcing and offshoring to countries such as India.

Even as analysts said that WhatsApp’s decision to change its privacy policy, which entails sharing users’ account info with parent Facebook, is not a user friendly move, they believe most consumers will stick with the platform and not migrate to other instant messengers yet. WhatsApp said the move will help Facebook offer more targeted advertisements on its own platform, while WhatsApp will continue to be ad-free.

Is Facebook Inc. facing an identity crisis? What else could explain why the social networking company launched a stand-alone app for teenagers which does not require a Facebook account. The app called Lifestage is for those under 21, created by a 19-year-old product manager.

Advertising powered Internet giant Alphabet Inc.’s revenue growth in the second quarter, as it has for years now. Revenue at Alphabet—Google’s parent firm, formed in 2015—rose 21% to $21.5 billion in April-June from a year ago. Advertising revenue reached $19.14 billion, a 19% year-on-year (y-o-y) increase.

Sure, Facebook increasing its quarterly profit to over $2 billion in the three months ended 30 June, a mere six months after it hit $1 billion is significant, but there’s something even more important in the numbers presented by the company’s founder-chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday. And that’s an inflection point that highlights even more troubled days for print media companies.

by Yahoo! Inc. has agreed to sell its core operations to US telecom giant Verizon Communications Inc. for $4.83 billion in a transaction that marks the end of the Internet pioneer as an independent company after a two-decade-long journey.

Yahoo, one of the biggest Internet services companies of yesteryears, has been acquired by US telecom major Verizon for $4.83 billion in an all-cash deal. While the acquisition is being seen by many analysts as the end of the road for the Internet pioneer, users and fans are hoping for a magical revival of its glorious past.

Yahoo, that has been restructuring its business for year now, finally sold out to Verizon. Verizon sealed the deal for $4.83 billion, all in cash. This acquisition gives Verizon access to Yahoo’s advertising technology tools such as BrightRoll and Flurry, assets such as Search, Mail, Messenger as well as real estate, among others. The deal is expected to close in Q1 2017.

Use of technology at hotels has evolved over the last 3 decades from being a simple billing system to now facilitating the entire booking to checkout cycle.

Despite seeping into all functional areas, technology has never been at the forefront of hotel business until today. Hotel business is certainly a one which requires a high level of personal human touch but moving on with times, guests today look for a more lifestyle oriented experience rather than a conventional hotel experience.

As oracle programmers rewrite fresh codes for its cloud services, the company is scripting a new history. It is transforming itself into a cloud-first company. Some industry watchers might argue that it is a tad late in entering the realm of cloud, but Oracle will tell you it doesn’t matter; it is scaling up faster than all others.

Microsoft on Monday announced a $26.2 billion deal to acquire professional networking platform LinkedIn for $196 per share. The market gave a mixed reaction to the announcement. While shares of LinkedIn surged 47 percent to near $193, Microsoft’s stock was down 3.2 percent.

Indian security leaders welcome the move, expected to be finalized later this year, saying it will definitely change the way technology is consumed by organizations, as they expect new innovations to help them tackle future threats more effectively.

On June 13, 2016 Microsoft announced the agreement to acquire LinkedIn for USD 26.2 billion. Important to note that this is the first big deal under Satya Nadella’s leadership and LinkedIn will continue to operate as an independent company. Albeit this (in theory) will allow more room for innovation, let’s put this announcement in perspective:

By acquiring LinkedIn, Microsoft is looking at further strengthening its business from corporates in India and social networking play, an area in which it lags behind Facebook. Analysts feel that Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes as one of the three segments that could get a shot in the arm with the LinkedIn buy.

The long drawn courtroom drama between Oracle and Google finally saw a slice of victory for the latter. A jury in a U.S district court unanimously upheld claims by Google that its use of Oracle’s Java development platform to create Android was protected under the fair use provision of copyright law, bringing trial to a close without Oracle winning any of the $9 billion in damages it requested.

The vision plans laid out by Infosys and Wipro, which involves doubling their revenue in five years, face several challenges — from employees having to think differently, to achieving scale in new business areas. Sometime in early 2008, TCS laid out its vision of achieving $10 billion by 2009-10. However, due to the global economic crisis, India’s largest software exporter achieved this milestone only in 2011-12. Flash forward now, and Infosys, followed by Wipro, has laid out similar such targets.

On 7 April 2016, as part of the Greyhound Research Analyst team, we had the opportunity to attend the Oracle CloudWorld 2016 in Mumbai, India. At the event we met some of Oracle’s global executives who highlighted the growing demand for MobileFirst, CloudFirst business applications.

When Nirmal Jain, an IBM employee, was about to be sent to Jordan on his first onsite posting, his family had serious concerns about security.

However, for Jain, now 24, it was a blessing in disguise. IBM paid him a daily hardship allowance of about 40 Jordanian Dinar (roughly ₹4,000) as the country, which borders Syria and Iraq, is considered a high-risk location.

In case you’ve not realised, Apple is disabling iPhones that have not been repaired through official Apple service centres. This problem even applies to phones that were earlier repaired and were working fine. But now suddenly after the latest update to the IOS 9, these phones have conked off. Officially it is called Error 53.

While Business Intelligence (BI) is fast becoming a top priority for most businesses, achieving Return on Investment (RoI) through BI implementation still remains a big challenge for CIOs. Though many CIOs plan to invest in BI going forward, most of them fear BI failure.

The healthcare industry has been dominated by technology providers like Dell, Philips, Siemens and GE. As important as their systems and machines were in capturing ailments and creating healthcare records, patient information was not meticulously maintained. Data was still being captured on paper and data would be dumped in an electronic database, which would be cleaned every six months. So there was no real time information available on previously treated patients. This was a business opportunity waiting to be taken up and several Indian startups have jumped into this. But one startup has become one of the most valued healthcare startups in the country.

As smartphone sales show signs of slowing down, for many technology companies, wearables, particularly smartwatches, seem to be the next growth market. Tech giants like Apple, Google, Samsung are hedging big bets on wearables. Apple’s Watch, which was launched back in April, has made the company the second biggest wearable company in the world. But consumers tell a different story. They aren’t convinced. They don’t find smartwatches useful enough.

Earlier this year, Google had announced that its much-hyped Glass project had been temporarily shelved. The company had announced it was time for Glass to grow out of its baby steps and put on their big kid shoes. In other words, stop selling its head-mounted computer to consumers and come back with a new, improved version.

When Vineet Nayyar joined Tech Mahindra (called Mahindra British Telecom), it was a mere $110-million company. Today, it has revenues close to $3.9 billion, and is the second biggest company in the Mahindra Group with a share of 23 per cent of group revenues. It is also No. 6 in the Indian IT services pecking order – after TCS, Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL Technologies. Most of the growth has come in the past three years, as the company followed an aggressive acquisition-led strategy. Sitting in his plush yet elegant home in Delhi’s tony Friends Colony, and surrounded by several paintings of M.F. Husain, Nayyar, Vice Chairman of Tech Mahindra, says: “There are two aspects (to acquisitions). One is finding the right asset. But, far more important is to make it work. And that is where we differentiate.”

The next five years would come from digital. Barely a year later, the IT service provider’s digital revenue is already at $2.2 billion and Chandra is upbeat. “It has been another great year. Our industry is at an inflection point overall because technology, particularly digital, is gaining centre stage and is making a big impact on every other industry,” he says.

Waves of startups have completely changed the way people consume and do things but what makes an idea stick and cater to unseen needs still largely remains a mystery. A new report reveals that their success is dependent on catering to the multifaceted demands of the ‘Information Generation’, a new breed of connected consumers who are shaped by easy availability of information and technology and are placing new demands on how businesses operate.

Ever since Dell announced its plans of $67 billion acquisition EMC, making it the largest tech mergers of all time – tech enthusiasts and analysts have gone wild predicting how Dell will integrate EMC into its current offerings. One of the most discussed part of the Dell-EMC merger is VMware’s fate. While, some believe Dell’s biggest gain in the deal is VMware, the independent public company acquired by EMC, several others (including heads of some rival companies) opine would Dell destroy VMware.

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